I am hearing buzzes about Go programming language from google. Wikipedia describes it like this: "Go aims to provide the efficiency of a statically-typed compiled language with the ease of programming of a dynamic language". I was thinking that since it is a language from the maker of android, they should have some support for creating android Apps. Is there any tool to create android App from Go? Is Go worthy language to learn with an assumption that "SOMEDAY" android might be based on GO.
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It is exceedingly unlikely that someday "android might be based on GO". It is similarly unlikely that someday it will be common to create Android apps using Go.CommonsWare– CommonsWare2012-04-10 20:13:18 +00:00Commented Apr 10, 2012 at 20:13
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@CommonsWare: you may be right, but a little looking around will uncover that many, many people thought that it was exceedingly unlikely that Go would ever be an AppEngine runtime.Adam Crossland– Adam Crossland2012-04-11 19:17:40 +00:00Commented Apr 11, 2012 at 19:17
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3@Jack: I can't say that I think that Go is your best investment if building Android apps is your primary focus, but I do wholeheartedly endorse learning Go just because it is a flat-out great language.Adam Crossland– Adam Crossland2012-04-11 19:18:53 +00:00Commented Apr 11, 2012 at 19:18
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There's currently no way to build Android apps with Go, and some hypothetical future version of Android isn't a good reason to invest time in Go today.
That said, Go is a great language, you can do a lot with it like write webservers, command line apps, and even AppEngine apps. So there's lots of good reasons to learn Go! But Android isn't one of them.
Edit: As of Go 1.5 it is possible to write Android apps completely in Go or as a Java app calling a Go JNI library. iOS is also expected to arrive in time for the final 1.5 release. Go to https://github.com/golang/mobile for more details.
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Running Wild
It should be noted that you can compile go to arm, so you can run go programs on android devices. The thing stopping you from writing a complete app in go is that you need to be using java to plug into the gui system that android has going on. You can have an app that calls a binary that was compiled from go, though, which could be useful if you wanted to write some of your program in go.
